


City of the Angels

by sparrowshellcat



Series: The Journey Series [3]
Category: Fast and the Furious Series, Supernatural, Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-17
Updated: 2012-03-17
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:44:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo had a nice quiet little life in L.A., with her own place, and a life of her own, where her mother couldn't tell her what she could and couldn't do, any more. It wasn't much, but at least it was hers. But when she saves a stranger from the ghost of a serial killer, she finds herself further and further twined into the life of this oh-so-interesting woman. But sometimes trying to keep someone safe can actually get you both into even more trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of the Angels

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Supernatural Slash Big Bang 2012. Supernatural and The Fast & The Furious are not mine, nor are they used with permission, but with great respect.
> 
> \---
> 
> For more fic and art, you can follow me on Tumblr! [sparrowshellcat](http://sparrowshellcat.tumblr.com)

_The engine raced under its hood, thrumming through the whole body of the car itself, shivering up through the leather of the seat under her, curling around her like a humming, thrumming embrace. It held her close, and it held her safe._

_Here, she forgot about work, forgot about the worried phone calls from her mother, about the ghosts and the monsters and all the things that wanted to kill her. Here she remembered only the zero to sixty, remembered only the ten second mark. But it wasn't only the car, here, it wasn't only the purring of the engine._

_It was the fingers on her thigh, delicate fingers curled on the denim, keeping her from losing herself in the car forever._

_Jo glanced at Mia, and grinned. “Which car do you want the pink slip of tonight, babe?”_

_Mia laughed, and offered, “Let's race the Skyline. I like it.”_

“ _Done.” Jo grinned, and pulled out onto the tarmac._

  
  


\---

  
  


It was supposed to be perfect.

Jo admitted that her ideal life, the one that she had concocted for herself when she lay in her bed late at night, mad at her mother and dreaming of hunting like her father had, was a complete dream. She knew that now, knew that it could never happen. But then she'd actually done the running off thing, and look where that had gotten her – bait for a serial killing ghost.

Her mother had dragged her home, of course, after the whole incident, told her what had happened to her father, and expected her to stop hunting all together.

And she did.

For a few months, anyway.

And then she ran away again, and this time, she took everything she'd learned from the first time around to make sure she completely disappeared. She'd grown up in bars, so she avoided them completely, and when she did finally go on hunts, she made sure the hunts she did had no connection to other hunters. It was hard, but it was possible, and she had so far managed it. The best way she had to assure that it didn't happen was to just find herself a new scene as completely different from her old life as she could get. 

Which is how she found her way to LA.

And _that_ , that was where it was supposed to be perfect. She had an apartment, she had a piece of shit car that used to be a classic and was kept running only through sheer effort, and she even got a job at a little grocery store. She had to wear a green vest and pretend to be nice to soccer moms and elderly widowers, but at least it was _free_ from anyone's else's orders, and she managed to keep the freak with the knife collection bit of her life away from everyone else. It was going to be her little slice of heaven, her perfect escape from the bullshit of everything.

Only it wasn't, it was complete and utter bullshit.

Working at the grocery store was probably the worst job she could ever imagine a person to have, because people treated her like dirt when they came through the checkout and the manager was the dirtiest sleezeball she'd ever met. He barely paid them minimum wage, and he liked threatening girls who knew they desperately needed this job with firing them if they didn't sleep with him. And her apartment was tiny and slightly grubby, with roaches and a hot water heater that alternated between scalding and freezing. And her car... well, she was proud of the car, at least. It wasn't much to look at, because it was a bit of a rust bucket, now, but it was her 1969 Fairlane Torino Cobra, and she'd gotten it cheap because it hadn't been running at the time – and it ran like a dream, now. She knew how to make a car run. She  _really_ knew how to make a car run. Her mother blamed Bobby for that, she knew. 

And hunting wasn't going terribly well, either, actually. It was getting harder and harder to find jobs that didn't already have other hunters attached to them, and she had to be careful to keep herself away from other hunters. If they figured out who she was, her mother would be here in a day.

Maybe not even that long.

So she stopped hunting, for a little while. Okay, she was already ready to leap into a hunt if anything came her way, but she stubbornly pushed newspapers aside and tried not to notice when things happened. Except that this made her feel  _guilty_ , so she just tried to push the jobs someone else's way as quietly as possible.

She usually pushed them to the Winchesters, well as she could. 

But sometimes the hunts came to her. 

It had been a long day. A  _very_ long day. She'd had to mop up a broken jar of mustard when apparently no one else had been available, and she'd been yelled at twice by angry customers who wanted to know why the hell they couldn't redeem coupons that had expired months ago. She was exhausted, she was sore, and she just really wanted to go home. It was late, which didn't make it much better, and she tugged her vest off over her head as she headed down the street to where she'd parked her car in a lot a couple blocks away. It was frustrating to have to walk every day, but it was a safer place to put her car. The manager of the grocery store refused to let them park in their lot, after all, and not a few of her coworkers had gotten their cars towed from in front of the store. 

Balling her vest up in her hands, she was moving through the quiet darkness of the city when the street lights overhead flickered.

Jo stopped dead, looking up at the light, brows furrowed. 

The lights flickered again for another few moments, then abruptly turned right off. She knew, logically, that she could blame this on the fact that the lights were old, maybe it just burned out. 

But Jo had known about hunting since she was old enough to swing a knife, and lights flickering out wasn't something she just wrote off as logical. Digging in her pocket for her keys, she flicked on the little LED flashlight that she used as a keychain, and swung it around the dark corner she was now standing on, swinging it through the little alley. She didn't see anything at first, and she almost told herself that she  _had_ been imagining things when a second, quick pass of the flashlight flicked across the shape of a person – who abruptly flickered and disappeared the moment the light touched them.

That wasn't just a homeless person.

That was a fucking spirit.

Swearing to herself, Jo darted into the alley, her vest still bundled under her arm, the little flashlight beam bobbing along ahead of her. Everything looked normal, despite the ghost she still swore she had seen. Maybe she had been imaging things, after all.

Halfway between the street she'd been on, and the street that the other end of the alley opened up into, Jo sighed softly, and stopped moving. There was no one there, now that she was actually here. She wasn't even sure what the hell she'd thought she was going to do, if she had even managed to find this spirit, because she had no salt on her, had nothing but her iron knife. But she didn't see a spirit now, she was alone.

Her breath suddenly misted the air, and Jo shivered.

It was Los Angeles. It might have even been a cool night, for Los Angeles, but it would never be cold enough here for her breath to mist in the air, like she was standing in Nebraska in the winter time, or something, and the cold chill that brushed down her spine wasn't natural, neither.

Jo bent to tug her left pant leg up, and jerked her daddy's knife out of her boot.

And that was when she heard the scream.

She couldn't call it a panicked, girly shriek of panic, or anything, it was a howl of pain and shock coming from a woman. But either way, it told her where the thing was, and she broke into a run again, bursting out of the narrow alley onto the street, back the way she'd come. 

A young woman, with dark, long hair spilling around her shoulders, was pinned against a store wall. She looked pale despite her caramel colouring, and her dark eyes were wide and scared. She looked as though she had somehow been chained to the wall, her wrists pinned above her head like a prisoner in an old fashioned dungeon, and she was struggling and straining, trying to get free. Books were scattered around her on the ground, papers everywhere, ones she'd likely dropped when she'd been attacked. 

The attacker itself was a man, tall and vicious looking, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, with scraggly, greasy hair and a beard that was so scruffy and messy that it could fairly house a whole family of mice. Jo might have thought that he was just another skeezy human assailant, except that he didn't move normally – he seemed to flicker as he jerked forward towards the girl.

The girl screamed again, wrenching her wrists against invisible chains, struggling to get free.

“Hey!” Jo yelled.

The spirit's head was staring at the girl one moment, then flickered and was turned to look directly at Jo the next, his dirty teeth bared. 

“Yeah, Casper! Pick on someone yer own size, huh?” She bared her teeth right back at it. 

It was a stupid tactic, but it was meant to hopefully distract the spirit from the girl so that she could get free. If it had worked, the girl would have been free, and hopefully the girl would have been able to get the fuck away from it. But it didn't work quite the way that she had planned.

Instead, it was as though she'd been hit by a mack truck. Massive pressure slammed against her chest, and Jo slammed against the wall hard enough to knock all of the breath out of her, and her wrists slammed up against the wall above her head, pinned into place. The other girl didn't drop off the wall, she was just as pinned as Jo was, now, only the girl was looking at her with a horrified look of shared terror. 

Jo coughed, and sucked in a few shaky breaths. “...that didn't work as planned.”

The spirit's head flicked away from Jo again, and back to the girl. He flickered, and moved closer to the dark haired girl, and closer, and she started thrashing, struggling to get free. Jo was pretty impressed, actually, at the fire that the other showed – she didn't just cringe and shriek and face death by pissing her pants – she kicked at the spirit, teeth bared as she struggled and strained and tried to break free. Jo had no doubt that if the spirit had actually been a physical attacker, this girl would have gotten free. 

Only it wasn't, was it, and this poor girl was going to die all because Jo had rushed into this like an idiot.

But she still held her knife. 

Jo looked up at her own hands, eyes narrowed. She couldn't see any kind of bonds or chains, but she could  _feel_ them, could feel cold metal wrapped around her wrists as though they were actually there. And if they were really there – then iron would work on them. 

She flicked her knife in her hand, so that the blade was aimed down towards her own wrists, and flicked it down, until the edge of the blade kissed her own skin. 

And her wrist fell free of whatever invisible ghost bonds had kept her in place.

Jo quickly slashed at the other, and started running.

The girl was still struggling, but she wasn't screaming anymore. There was a dirty ghost hand pressing against her mouth, keeping any screams within, but the girl was still making muffled grunts and sounds, struggling to get free, struggling to scream, struggling to get any sound out that could alert passers by that she was in danger. The ghost was hurting her, now, running his fingertips across the girls stomach, and the fabric of her shirt rent open under his path, blood blossoming on her skin. She arched harder when he did, eyes wide as she howled against his hand again, struggling to breathe, to get free.

And then Jo drove the iron knife right into the ghost's lower spine, in a spot that she knew would have paralyzed any human. 

It disappeared in a blaze of smoke and ash, and the girl dropped down off the wall, gasping, eyes wide. 

“Oh my god,” the girl gasped, struggling to breathe. “Thank you...”

“I didn't kill the bitch.” She said, firmly, panting herself. “He will come back. Come on, we gotta get the hell out of here.”

“R-right.” The girl panted, and bolted to gather up her books.

“Leave them!” Jo cried.

“I can't!” She said, struggling to gather them up. “I need these... please...”

“Fuck.” She took a deep breath, and darted forward to grab the last of the girl's papers, holding them against her chest as she reached out to grab the other girl's arm, and hauled her along behind herself. She didn't know who this girl was, but she knew that she had to get her the hell away from here before the ghost came back and hurt her again. It was only another block to her car, anyway...

To her credit, the girl followed her without question, just followed with her feet pounding on the sidewalk as they both ran pell mell.

Scrambling to sort out her keys, Jo finally got the key into the door of her shitty looking car, and yanked the door open. She didn't have automatic locks like those new cars did, so there was no way she was going to be able to flick it open for the girl, so she just stood back, quickly, and said, “Get in.”

The girl didn't question – she slid into the car like she was made to slide into cars, and shimmied across into the passenger seat.

Jo followed her, quickly, and slammed the key in before cranking the engine.

And moments later, they were pulling out of the parking lot, engine roaring as they bolted down the street.

Jo didn't actually know where they were going, at first, to be honest. She just drove, well past her own apartment, just trying to get the fuck away from the spirit, trying to get far enough that he wouldn't be able to find them again, hopefully. Once she did finally get home, she would have to figure out who he had been, so that she could track him down, so that she could salt and burn his bones so that he wouldn't hurt anyone else, but at least she'd gotten this girl away from him, for now. “Are you hurt bad?” Jo asked, knuckles still white as she clenched the steering wheel tightly. 

“I'll live,” the girl said, and Jo was impressed at the solid note of strength that underlay that girl's voice. 

“Do you need a hospital?”

“No.” She said, leaning back in Jo's passenger seat. She glanced in the mirror, and watched the other as she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I do need an explanation, though.”

Jo shook her head. “Trust me, you don't want to know.”

“I need to know.” She said, firmly. “So either you tell me what happened, and what that was, or I find someone else who will tell me. And maybe you don't care, but maybe you don't want me telling everyone that there's a girl at Greg's Grocery that fights ghosts.”

“Son of a bitch.” Jo breathed.

This was basically her biggest fear, that someone was going to go out and tell everyone who she was, and that her mother would be able to find her. There was a long moment of silence in the car, then she finally said, “Do you have somewhere we can talk about this without anyone interrupting, then?”

“Yeah, my house.” She said, and gave Jo the address.

  
  


\---

  
  


The house was a quiet little family home in what looked like used to be a very nice neighbourhood, but had become somewhat worn and rough in the last couple decades. The house was clean, fairly well cared for, but clearly old. 

She set the pile of books she'd been carrying down on a side table, and Jo finally looked at them for the first time since she'd saved the girl. They were some fairly serious text books, from the looks of them – anatomy and medical information. “Working on being a doctor?” She asked, tapping the cover of the top one.

“Yeah,” the girl nodded, smiling softly. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Yeah... that'd be great,” she nodded, flopping down at the kitchen table, looking around the little 50s style room. 

“Here,” she offered her a bottle of Corona, a moment later, and settled down across from her at the table, as well, setting another bottle down in front of herself. She smiled softly, then said, finally, “My name is Mia Toretto.”

“Jo Harvelle,” she said, cracking the cap off of her bottle, and sipping at the beer, relieved.

“So what was that thing?”

She took a long, deep breath, watching her for a long moment, then finally said, “Do you believe in ghosts, Mia?”

“I believe that there are things beyond what we see.” Mia said, after a moment.

“Huh. I would have figured that someone that was trying to become a doctor would be all serious and practical.” She said, with a smirk, finally. 

“I'm not most doctors, I guess.”

“Guess not.” Jo laughed softly, but the smile faded a moment later, and she took a long, deep swallow of her beer before she leaned back in her seat, and closed her eyes. “That was a ghost. A seriously pissed off, seriously evil ghost.”

“And you killed it.”

“Hell no.” She snorted, opening her eyes to look at Mia. She really was too pretty of a girl to be pulled into this shit. “I didn't kill it, I just sent it away for a little while. I have an iron knife... iron chases them off. Iron, salt, holy water... they all chase off spooks. In order to get rid of it forever, I’m going to have to figure out who it was, find their remains, then salt and burn them.”

“...you're going to dig the man's body up?” Mia asked, after a long moment, looking absolutely disgusted.

“I told you that you didn't want to know it.” Jo murmured.

“I really didn't _want_ to know, I _needed_ to.” She said, firmly, and shifted to pick up a bottle opener off the counter behind her, and finally cracked her own bottle of Corona open, sipping at it. “Is this something that you do on a regular basis?”

“Not so much, really.” She gnawed at her lip. “My dad did, though.”

“So your dad taught you how to hunt things like ghosts?” She asked, quietly. “Huh. Something of a family business, or something?”

“No... I don't think he would have wanted me to hunt, actually.” Jo smiled faintly. “He died, hunting.”

“My father was a race car driver.” Mia said, softly, swiping her fingers over the sides of the bottle, gathering up the condensation off the sides of the beer. “He lived on that race track, lived behind the wheel of a car. And he died on the race track. But you know what? My brother still races cars, even though it killed my dad. I think that's sort of what children do, sometimes.”

“I'm sorry.” Jo said, softly.

“It's all right.” She smiled, tightly, and sighed before she took another swig of her beer. “Do you think that ghost is gone, then?”

“No,” she snorted. “Remember I said I had to salt and burn?”

“Right. Sorry. I’m a little... flustered.” She flushed, and shifted. “So if ghosts are real... is everything real? Werewolves, vampires, demons...?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Not gonna lie to you, they're all real.”

“Oh.” Mia said, and let out a long, shaky breath.

“I'm sorry,” Jo murmured.

“No, it's – it's... it's all right. So you said you need to figure out who the guy was, right? How do you find that sort of thing out?”

“Well, I usually see if there are any stories about people who have seen the same ghost before and all, or if there are any cases of people who were like that ghost was in life... I’ve hunted down a serial killer before, because he was the using the same MO as he always did when he as alive.”

“Mm.” Mia frowned, brows furrowed for a moment. “Would he have killed me? I mean, _could_ he have?”

“Well, he could have, for sure.” Jo admitted.

“Would he have?”

“I can't say for sure,” she said, finally, taking a deep long swallow of her drink. “But based on the way that he was torturing you... yes, I’d say that he probably would have killed you.”

Mia shuddered.

“I'm sorry.” She murmured, softly. 

“I asked, remember?” Mia smirked, and sighed before she stood. “Well? Are you coming, or not?”

“Coming...?” She blinked.

“To find out who the hell this man is.” She laughed softly, smiling brightly at her. “I have a computer, we can do some research and see if we can figure out who he was. Then you can figure out where he's buried, and we can dig the sucker up and burn him. I don't really like the idea of someone else having to go through what I went through today.”

“Mia, you really don't want to get involved in this, trust me...”

“I don't want this to happen to anyone else.” She said, again, firmly.

Jo sighed, and nodded. “Okay, we can research, then.”

“I know, I’m not an expert on ghost hunting like you,” Mia laughed, heading into the living room, where there was a desk with an older computer set up, and settled down at the desk, nodding to a second wooden chair that stood beside the desk. “You can have that one. But even if I’m not an expert, I know what happened to me tonight. I know that if you hadn't come along and saved me, I would be dead right now. Or worse. And I don't want that to happen to anyone else, okay?”

“I understand.” Jo nodded, and tugged the other chair over, settling beside her. 

It was hours later before Jo abruptly said, “We're not getting anywhere. I think we need some sleep.”

Mia looked up, surprised. There were dark circles under her eyes now, and there were several bottles scattered on the edge of the desk now – neither of them were likely to admit that they were trying to deal with the stress and traces of adrenaline still skittering through their system by drinking it away, but it was true that it was exactly what they were doing. “Are you sure? We didn't find him yet...”

“I know we didn't, but if I stare at a computer screen for any longer, I’m going to go cross eyed forever.” Jo groaned, pressing her palms against her lower back, and cracking her spine. “I need some sleep.”

“Mmm. All right.” She nodded, and leaned forward to flick the screen off.

“It was nice to meet you, Mia, maybe I’ll see you around,” Jo said, lightly, and picked up her boots, which she'd sort of kicked off a couple hours before.

“Woah.” Mia held up her hands. “You don't think you're _leaving_ , do you?”

“That was pretty much exactly what I was thinking.” She snorted. “I'm going to go home, and get some sleep, so that I can go to work tomorrow, and then after work, I’ll try and figure out who the hell the ghost was.”

“First off.” She twisted in her seat to face her properly. “You've been drinking, you're not driving.”

Jo groaned softly. “I know how to drink, I’m not worried...”

“Yeah, well, I am. And even if you hadn't been drinking, I do _not_ want to see you leaving and then never coming back. I’m in this, now, Jo, I’m not going to go away just because you run off and hope that the Toretto girl will forget about the fact that a ghost tried to kill her.” She smiled tightly, and stood. “Come on. I have a guest room upstairs, you can stay there. You're not going to drive off and never come back, all right?”

“You are an unusual woman.” Jo sighed, but reluctantly followed her up the stairs.

  
  


\---

  
  


Jo woke early, around four, when it was still dark, and slipped quietly out of the bed. She had never slept well in a stranger's house anyway, so she wasn't really surprised that she hadn't slept in. 

Carrying her boots, she crept quietly down the hallway, and hesitated beside one of the open doors, peering silently in. 

It was a bedroom, of course, and there was a little lamp still burning on the bedside table. Mia was sprawled on the bed, a pile of papers spread out beside her, as though she'd fallen asleep reading, and hadn't actually managed to get to bed, properly. Her mouth was open just slightly as she breathed, slowly, dark eyelashes shadowy on her cheeks, dark hair spilling around her head like the dark tresses out of a romance novel might. Frankly, if Jo didn't know better, she would have thought that this woman  _had_ stepped out of a romance novel somewhere, and slipped to sleep, right there. Sure, she felt bad, slipping away from the house before she had a chance to actually say goodbye to the girl, but at the same time, it was better this way. Mia was a smart girl – fuck, a doctor in training? - and she didn't deserve to be pulled into this shit. She'd be so much safer if she was just out of the whole mess, and stayed home and out of the mess.

She padded in socked feet down the stairs, and slipped out of the house. 

Before she left, though, she  _did_ leave a note – a quickly scrawled  _Mia, I had to go to work. Sorry I didn't have a chance to thank you for everything. Please stay safe. Jo_ . She sort of figured that at least that fulfilled her obligation of duty to her. 

Mia would be much safer without Jo there to accidentally drag her into more encounters with spirits and monsters.

  
  


\---

  
Jo was at work, three days later, when she realized that there was some undercurrent running through the other women working the tills. They were whispering among themselves whenever there were no customers, and several of the women looked genuinely scared.

“What's going on?” She asked one of the other girls, a sweet little middle aged woman named Maribelle that Jo got on pretty well with.

Maribelle looked up at her with worried, dark eyes, and said, “Haven't you heard the news?”

“What news?” She asked, surprised. 

Sarah, one of the other girls, one with too much bleach in her hair and too much makeup on her face, leaned over her till belt to hiss, “A bunch of girls have been getting kidnapped the last few days, but... it's getting worse. A girl got kidnapped yesterday. Five blocks away from here... stolen right out of the little restaurant she worked at. Someone saw the guy hauling her out of the restaurant, but police are saying that there is no evidence, or anything. No leads.  _Five blocks_ from here! A local girl!”

Jo sucked in a sharp breath. “That's fucked up.”

Maribelle nodded, quickly, squeezing her lips together in a thin line. “A lot of the girls are scared. I mean, if this can happen to a local girl at work, it could happen to any of us.”

“Does anyone know who the girl was?” She asked, frowning. “Like, is it someone we know?”

“Do you know?” Maribelle glanced at her. “I can't remember... Toreno?”

“Toretto.” Sarah nodded, quickly. “Mia Toretto. You remember, her brother Dom rolled his car a few months ago, the police were after him because of some robbery thing?”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” she nodded, quickly.

Jo felt cold. Like her insides had completely frozen. Mia was supposed to be safer because Jo had left. Not supposed to be fucking  _kidnapped_ . “...where did you say she was taken from?”

“From her restaurant, last night.” Sarah said.

“Someone tell Greg I had to go, yeah?” She tugged her vest over her head, and flicked the light for her aisle off. She had to go, she had to go _now_.

“But you're still on for another two hours!” Maribelle said, eyes wide.

“Well then, I quit.” She said, and ran out from behind the counter, not even waiting for the automatic doors to open properly before she was slamming her way though the doors and racing, fast as her legs would take her, down the street. She had to get to her car, she had to get there now, she had to find out what had happened to Mia.

Because she was fairly damn sure that the 'man' that had kidnapped Mia was actually already dead.

Her tires squealed when she pulled up beside the sidewalk of the little diner – how had she not realized that this little place was run by Mia? She'd only ever seen this place as a spot where race cars and classic cars would be parked, like it was a driver's hang out. She scrambled out of the car, and dashed inside, but there were police standing around, talking and apparently investigating, and they didn't seem pleased to see her there.

So she lied – she was fucking  _good_ at lying – and told them that Mia was her girlfriend, that she'd only just heard about her lover going missing, and that she was scared for her. There, the guilt became handy, because she actually started crying, trying to glean as much information about what  _really_ had happened from them as possible. She'd been researching the last few days, like she said she would, and she had a short list of the spirits she'd thought it might be. She just had to know which one connected with that list.

They bought her bullshit story, and before long she had one of the few female officers there with her arm around her shoulders, speaking softly to her, trying to comfort her. 

She didn't care about the comfort – she cared about what had fucking  _happened_ .

And maybe because she was apparently the lover of a missing girl, or maybe because the officer felt really sorry for her, the woman with her arm around her shoulder spilled more information than she probably should have. She told her about what kind of vehicle the man had been driving, about what the man looked like. She told her that they'd found soot and traces of chemicals there – there were traces of cyanide on the counter, the police woman said, quietly, that they were scared that the man had tried to poison Mia, but that was the information that Jo had needed.

She'd excused herself, saying she really needed to be alone right now, oh yes, call me if you have anything, given away a fake number, and slipped away to her car.

  
  


\---

  
  


Jo was shoving everything that she thought she could possibly use when she finally grabbed her cell phone and dialed a number that she didn't think she was going to be ever calling again.

“Hello?” A voice answered on the other end of the line.

She sighed softly, and said, “Dean?”

“ _Jo_? Is that you?”

Dean Winchester. Good hunter. But they'd had a bit of a terrible parting, last time they'd talked, because her mother had just informed her that Jo's father had died because of Dean's. And while she really didn't want to focus on the awkwardness of that, she had to talk to Dean. She needed help. “Yeah, it's me. Look, how far are you from California?”

“...we're _in_ California.” He said, after a moment.

Jo could have cried in relief, shoving salt in her bag. “Where in California?”

“L.A. We're on a hunt. There's a spook, kidnapping girls. The ghost of a serial killer, picking up where he left off back in the eighties.”

Jo swallowed, hard. “...from when he took cyanide while in police custody.” She said, softly.

Dean was silent for a long minute. “How do you know that, Jo?”

“Because Mia Toretto is a friend of mine.” She said, voice wavering slightly, then clamped down on that note of fear and tried to push it out of her mind as she slung her bag over her shoulder and headed out to the car, tossing the bag into the trunk. “And I’ve already salted and burned his bones, so I have to assume that he left something of himself behind, somewhere.”

The other man groaned on the phone. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Jo slid into the front driver's seat, and for a moment, just leaned forward, resting her forehead on the steering wheel. “...what do we do?”

There was conversation on the other end of the line, though Dean wasn't talking to her. She could hear Sam's voice, and she knew that he was consulting with his brother to figure out their plans. They were probably driving, right now. She swore that they spent more time in that car of theirs than they did anywhere else in the world. Dean loved that car more than he loved anyone or anything else. “Okay, I assume there's nothing we can do to convince you to leave this hunt to us, is there?”

“Not a fucking chance,” Jo confirmed.

“Didn't think so. Okay. We're going up to that ranch he used to have, where he and that other guy had their torture camp and all. If there's anywhere in the world that there are remains of him, it's probably there.”

“I thought they destroyed that place.” She frowned, sitting up, holding the phone so tightly her knuckles were white.

“The police totally tore it up, trying to find bodies and all, and the main house has burned, but some of the outbuildings are still there.” Dean said, and she shuddered slightly at the sound in his voice. It was concern and a note of fear. “Including their old armory, and the torture room.”

“Oh shit.” She breathed.

“Yeah. We should be there in about half an hour. Meet us at the end of the lane way? _Don't_ go into the property alone, you got it. This guy will chop you up if you walk into there, all pretty little girl.”

“Hey,” she frowned slightly, cranking the key and pulling out of her parking space, starting out onto the road. “These guys chopped up men, too.”

“Yeah, but there's two of us. Just don't go in there alone, all right?”

“Fine.” She grumbled.

  
  


\---

  
  


Mia was groggy and confused when she finally opened her eyes.

Her head ached and rang, like there was something rattling around inside her skull, and she groaned softly, struggling to see. It was dark – very dark, and she couldn't quite see anything. The longer she strained against the darkness, though, the more she could see the very faint shadows of shapes – people, she was pretty sure, standing with their arms above their heads. How strange.

She tried to rub her eyes, to see if she could see further or better, but realized that she couldn't actually move her arms enough to do so – because her arms were also pinned over her head.

Tugging sharply, she realized that it felt like there were chains around her wrists – and a look above her in the darkness confirmed that this was, in fact, the case. This felt exactly like it had when she had been pinned in the alley a few days ago, when Jo had rescued her...

“Oh god,” she whispered, starting to remember what had happened.

She'd been at the diner, working out a quiet night, studying for a test she was supposed to write next week. She was a bit of an obsessive studier, because she always wanted to make sure that she was prepared. She'd looked up when she had heard a tinkle of the bell over the door, and when she had, it had been the same man from before.

Jo had said that salt was something spirits had hated, so she'd whipped a salt shaker at him, and it had worked, or at least she thought it had. He'd disappeared as quickly as he'd appeared – but then he'd been right behind her, behind the counter, strong arms wrapped around her middle, and he'd hauled her away. She had lost consciousness somewhere around the time he'd hauled her out of the restaurant, and she had no idea how much time had passed since then, to now. Trying to steady herself a little, she tried to figure out what had happened to her, if she was feeling all right, and discovered when she did that her wrists were bloody – probably from the chains – and that she wasn't wearing most of her clothes anymore. That would explain why she was so damn cold. 

“Hello?” She called, softly, hoping to all hell that it wasn't the ghost that answered.

“Oh my god,” a voice answered her, a girl's. “Oh my god, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Mia said, softly. 

“Get me out of here!” The girl cried, voice peaking a little, cracking.

“Shh shh shh!” She said, quickly, trying to get her to calm down. “Quiet, quiet. You don't want the guy to come back, do you?”

“No. No, I really don't.” She whispered, voice cracking again.

“Okay, good. Um. I’m Mia. Who're you?”

“Virginia,” she whispered, and she heard the clinking of chain, and assumed that the girl was trying to move. “Where are we? What's going on?”

“It's a... it's a guy that wants to hurt us. Do you remember being brought here?”

“A little of it,” Virginia admitted. “He had a fucking gross van, a huge grey raper van, you know? It was... it was disgusting, it smelled like blood and... sex, and... there was this disgusting stained mattress in the back that he threw me on, and it was disgusting...”

“Pleasant.” Mia murmured. 

“How are we going to get out of here?” Virginia asked, voice unsteady. 

“I don't know,” she admitted.

“The police are going to come though, right?” She asked, and the chains chinked again, harder. 

“I hope so.”

Mia didn't think they were going to. After all, this guy that had captured them wasn't alive, he was a ghost, and if he was really a serial killer tracking down people like his old victims, like Jo had suggested the other night when they had been researching and trying to figure out who the ghost was, then the police wouldn't come here to investigate, because the ghosts would assume that they were already dead. Fuck. Maybe Jo would come. She'd saved her once before, it was probably too much to hope that she might do it again, but Mia didn't really know what else to hope for.

There was a scrape of a door, somewhere, and Mia looked up, sharply.

“Oh my god!” Virginia howled, and the chain startled rattling desperately. “Oh my god, it's him! Let us go, oh my god _let me go_!”

There was a flare of light suddenly, and suddenly Mia could see Virginia's face, so pale her every freckle stood out like paint splatters on her skin, red hair a scrambled mess around her face, eyes wide in terror. The one carrying the light was a man – the same man that she had seen, several times now, and he was grinning, sadistically. 

“We're not going anywhere, darling.” He said. “We're going to play.”

And then Virginia started screaming and blood started dripping to the dirt floor, and Mia shuddered, burying her face in her upper arm as she tried not to watch.

  
  


\---

  
  


Jo kept her word and waited, but it was very close. She had parked at the end of the driveway, and was leaning against the trunk of the car, arms crossed, when the Impala finally pulled up beside her Fairlane, and she pushed off of it, heading towards them. If they'd been even five minutes later, she would have been heading in alone, fuck what Dean thought.

Sam came out of the passenger seat first, all six foot forever of gangly muscles and shaggy hair, brows furrowed in concern. “Jo? Hey, are you okay?”

“No,” she shook her head, but when he stepped forward to hug her, she let him, burying her face in his flannel shirt, enfolded for a moment in his jacket and the smell of him. It was a comforting sort of thing, actually, a familiar thing. “How're you guys?”

“We're okay,” Sam said, lightly, and stepped back.

Dean stepped closer, smiling slightly, and took her hands. “Hey. I’m sorry to hear your friend got dragged into this.”

“It's my fault.” Jo said, softly. “I thought she'd be safer if I left her alone. I should have warded her, or _something_ , but no... I wanted to keep her safe. Fuck. Come on, we can have this happy little reunion later, okay? We need to find Mia.”

“You know,” Sam said, slowly, “That there is a chance that she's already - “

“Don't say that.” She said, quickly. 

“We just don't want you to go in there and then find that - “

“Shut the fuck up, Sam.” Jo said, firmly, scooping up her rifle, and leaning the stock of it against her shoulder. “Seriously. Let's go find the girls, and we are going to find out where this bastard left a piece of him behind, and we are going to burn his fucking remains, got it?”

“We got it,” Dean said, quickly, before his brother could answer, and nodded to Jo. “Let's go.”

It was dark, and the only light between the cement buildings that were left of the ranch were the flashlights that the brothers were carrying. Jo found it almost surreal, actually, because she had gotten so used to L.A., where even if there wasn't an immediate light source, there was always the ambient light pollution that made even the darkest nights light enough to see to walk. They checked each of the buildings one by one, starting with what was left of the house, then the armory, but there was no trace of any of the girls that had gone missing.

“I don't like how quiet this is,” Sam said, finally. 

“Neither do I,” Dean agreed, frowning as he swept his flashlight over the space ahead of them. “We've been looking for remains, but... I don't see anything.”

“The only building left is the torture room, right?” Jo frowned.

“Yeah,” Sam nodded.

“Fuck,” she readjusted her rifle so that it was ready to fire, and nodded at the door. “Then let's go. Please. Even if we can't find his remains, if we can at least find the girls...”

“Yeah,” the older Winchester nodded, quickly.

It was Sam that tried the door of the little building, and glanced at Dean. “You got the lock picks?”

“We don't fucking have time for _lock picks_!” Jo all but yelled at him, angrily.

“...Jo?”

The three of them froze, startled, and Sam finally hissed, “Who said that?”

“Jo?” The voice called again, cracking slightly when it did, and Dean nodded towards the door of the building, surprised. “Jo? Is that you? We're – we're in here...”

“Bust the fucking _door_ down!” Jo gasped. “That's Mia!”

Dean nodded, grimly, and drew back, slamming the heel of his boot into the door handle. The door creaked and cracked, but still mostly held. He slammed his foot into the door again, and it splintered inwards, rotten wood snapping. 

Jo shouldered through the broken door, and let out a shout of relief when Dean swung the flashlight inside the little building, and it flicked over a familiar woman. Mia was dressed only in a pair of blood-stained underwear and a pair of sneakers and socks, the rest of her clothes gone. Her blood-sticky hair hung over her chest like a painting of the Venus de Milo, but it wasn't really enough to really keep her modest. Her eyes were slightly glazed, and when she smiled at Jo, it split a barely-healed wound on her lip back open, but she didn't seem to really care. “Jo,” she said, voice cracking, trying to stretch herself up to take some of the stress off of her bloody wrists, looking absolutely exhausted. “You did come. Oh thank god...”

“Mia...” Jo gasped, and dashed forward, reaching up to fumble with the chains around the other's wrists, fighting to get her free. 

“Be careful... he could still be here.” She panted, voice rough and unsteady. “He just left, like a minute ago, he could be anywhere... please... check the other girls.”

“Other girls?” Jo hadn't even noticed anyone else there, her focus had been entirely on Mia the moment that she'd heard her voice. 

“Already did,” Sam said softly, as he moved closer to them, and shook his head.

“Are they okay?” Mia asked, dark eyes meeting Sam's.

He shook his head again, and her face crumpled slightly, as she struggled to hold back tears. “I tried to talk them through it, I tried to get them to hold on... but they... he was... fuck, Jo, he was  _sick_ ...”

“He was Leonard Lake,” Dean said, bracing his rifle on his arm as he considered them. Sam had begun helping Jo with the chains, and when Mia was finally free and sagged, unable to really hold herself up, Dean darted forward to help her stay up. “Serial killer in the eighties, him and his partner killed about twenty five people before he killed himself while in police custody. Jo's already taken care of his remains, that means there has to be something of him left behind. Did you see anything, hear anything...?”

Mia shook her head, wincing slightly as Jo crouched in front of her, checking her wounds. “Wait.”

“There's something?” Sam frowned, shedding his jacket, and offering it to Jo.

Jo wrapped the jacket carefully around the other girl, trying to cover her up. 

“Yeah,” Mia said, rasping slightly. “One of the other girls was telling me about the van he brought her here in... she said it smelled like blood and sex. I mean... maybe this is sick, but... would the most disgusting mattress in the world count as remains?”

Dean met his brother's eyes. “Depends on how much he used it, and what exactly he left behind.”

Sam frowned, then hesitated. “There's a chance. I’ll go torch the van.”

“Dean?” Jo carefully stood, helping Mia stand back up, as well, bracing the other girl as well as she could. She was terrified that the other girl was not going to be all right, that poor beautiful Mia was going to pass out from blood loss or something, or that she wasn't going to be able to get her out of here, all right. She wanted to save her friend. It was all her fault that she was in this danger in the first place, she had to save her, now. “Can you help me get Mia to the car?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, and stepped forward, sliding his arm under Mia's on the other side, and together, they helped the girl out of the building.

“I feel like some kind of invalid,” Mia murmured, flushed, as she clung to their shoulders.

“Naw, think of it as you're the damsel in distress,” Jo grinned up at her, awkwardly, trying to make her feel better.

Dean snorted.

“Shut up, Dean.” Jo rolled her eyes, and helped Mia stumble along the gravel driveway. 

“Yeah, shut up, Dean.” Mia laughed, breathlessly, voice still rough and raspy. “How'd you find me, anyway?”

“Research, remember?” 

“Yeah, but... how'd you know he got me?” She winced, coughing. Mia was pale, though her cheeks were flushed almost too bright, like she had a fever. “I mean, you were gone at work, right?”

“Yeah, at work.” Jo murmured, flushed, feeling guilty.

“You knew about the ghost, too, didn't you?” Dean asked, frowning. “You didn't sound surprised when Sam said it was Leonard Lake.”

“Seeing as how Jo saved me with an iron knife...” she murmured, eyes half closed. Fatigue was beginning to catch up with her, and Mia looked exhausted. “I knew, I had her tell me what was going on. How much further to the car? I don't think I can keep walking much longer...”

“We're almost there,” Jo promised. 

“We're going to get you to the car, and then we're going to get you to a hospital,” Dean said, firmly, holding Mia up, carefully. “We're going to get you some medical attention.”

“No,” she said, quickly. “I just need a shower and a bed.”

Dean glanced at Jo, looking like he really didn't believe her. “Hospital, right?”

“We'll see how bad it is,” Jo murmured, then suddenly she was wrenched away from Mia and Dean, slamming back against the wall of the armory that they had checked, earlier, the breath knocked completely out of her, gagging on her own air. Her gun skidded away from her and landed in the grass, well out of her reach as she strained against the wall, spread out like a starfish, arms and legs pressed hard into the stone as she struggled to get free. 

“ _Jo_!” Dean howled, horrified. 

“Son of a – get Mia safe!” She screamed, straining against the invisible bonds, eyes wide. “Get Mia to the fucking _car_ , Dean!”

“I am not _leaving_ you!”

Mia nearly tumbled to her knees as she pushed Dean away. “Go save her...”

“ _Go_!” Jo howled, desperate, furious. “Go fucking take care of fucking _Mia_!”

There was a skittering, flickering sort of movement to their left, and a bearded man with wide, wild eyes stepped closer to them, not moving like a man usually moved, but every step he took, he'd flicker out of view and be further ahead of where he had been before, closer and closer. 

“Fuck you, buddy,” Dean snarled, stepping forward with his rifle, and firing directly at the spirit.

The ghost of Leonard Lake disappeared in a flash of smoke and flame, then abruptly was standing right behind Dean, arm raised with a wicked looking knife in hand.

“ _Dean_!” Jo screamed, straining as hard as she could. 

He spun, in time for the ghost's arm to hit his shoulder, instead of the knife plunging into his back, and Dean staggered under the weight of that strike, but he struck back, just as hard, trying to shove the spirit off of him. But it moved, faster than he could, and Dean suddenly went flying away, slamming into the wall of the torture house, and slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, either unconscious or stunned.

“ _Dean_!” The young female hunter pulled and strained against invisible bonds, nearly sobbing in frustration as she tried to get free, tried to do something, _anything_ to save her friend, her fellow hunter. “You son of a fucking _bitch_!”

Then, abruptly, the ghost was in front of her, and she yelped in horror, stunned.

Leonard grinned, dirty teeth bared as he stepped closed to her, filthy fingers reaching out towards her, pressing fingertips to the side of her face, and Jo howled in pain as he ran them slowly down towards the point of her chin, slicing open her skin as he did, as though his fingertips were made of razor blades. 

But then there was the bark of a shotgun, and he was abruptly gone.

Gasping for air, Jo lifted her head, and gaped at the sight of Mia Toretto holding a rifle, Sam's jacket fallen to the ground as she stood there, mostly naked and blood covered like some kind of fucked up warrior goddess princess, Xena of the modern day, panting slightly as she aimed down the line of the rifle.

Jo couldn't help it, she grinned at the woman, pleased, then the blood drained back out of her face as she saw the spirit re-materialize, knife in hand. 

“ _Mia_!?”

Mia spun, still unsteady on her feet, gasping as she realized who was standing behind her, knife raised, and staggered back. She fell down to the grass, staring up at the spirit with wide eyes, the blood loss simply finally too much, and he moved forward, teeth bared as he raised the knife - 

And then he howled, fire rippling up through his whole body, and he abruptly disappeared in a flare of ash and sparks.

The bonds holding Jo to the wall abruptly let go, and she slumped to her knees on the ground, panting. 

“Are you all right?” Sam called, jogging around the corner, looking slightly out of breath.

“Way to cut that close, Sam,” Jo gagged, and struggled to her feet, staggering towards Mia, desperate as she tried to reach the other woman, desperate to check on her, to make sure that she was all right. 

“A thank you would suffice,” he laughed, lightly, and went to check on his brother.

Jo dropped to her knees beside Mia, and cupped the other girl's jaw as she panted, meeting her eyes. “Are you okay?”

Mia laughed breathlessly. “No.”

She laughed softly, stroking the other's cheek, very lightly, smiling at her. “I'm just really glad you're alive right now, Mia, to be honest.”

“Me too.” She murmured. “But I could really use a shower and a bed. For about a week.”

Jo laughed, breathlessly, pressing her forehead to the other woman's as she closed her eyes, just trying to breathe, just trying to be calm. “I was so scared, Mia...”

“Trust me, so was I,” she murmured.

“Hey, let's get the hell out of here,” Dean said, softly, as he walked up beside the pair of them, pressing his fingers to a slice on his forehead. Blood was trickling down the side of his face, and he looked entirely grumpy and displeased by this whole endeavor – not that Jo could really blame him, in the slightest. “Before we call the cops and get them some shit answer about what happened out here, okay?”

“Thank you,” Mia murmured, looking up at him.

“Hey, this is what I’m here for.” He grinned, crookedly, looking like he was trying to flirt her up a little. “Saving people. Hunting things.”

“I'm glad you are.” She murmured, and smiled when Jo helped her up. “Thank you.”

“Let's get you to the car,” Dean said, grinning.

“She'll come in my car,” Jo said, helping the other woman to her car, relieved that Sam bent to pick up his jacket again, and that when they got her in the front passenger seat, he handed it over to her again to wrap carefully around Mia. “You guys gonna follow us, or... what's the plan?”

“Yeah. We'll follow.” Sam nodded. 

“You can stay at my house, if you want,” Mia murmured, eyes half lidded as she leaned back in the seat, looking exhausted. “I have room.”

“Thanks,” he nodded.

“C'mon,” Jo closed the door quietly, and rounded her car to slide into her own seat. “I want to put this place in my rear view as quickly as possible.

  
  


\---

  
  


In the end, Sam carried Mia up the stairs to the bathroom, with Jo following closely behind, worried. Mia kept insisting that she could walk on her own, but every time that she tried to actually sit, she slumped down to her knees again, and she wasn't able to keep her feet under her, properly. 

So Sam carried her. 

“Okay,” Jo said, when he set her down to sit on the closed lid of the toilet seat, looking up at Sam and Dean. “I think I can handle this from here, okay?”

“You sure?” Dean asked, slightly, leering down at Mia. 

“Very sure, get out of here, you perv,” she snorted, and pushed them both towards the door, and closed and locked it behind them. “Get.”

The brother's laughed, but headed out of the hall. 

“You can help yourself to the fridge!” Mia called after them, voice still rough.

“You're awesome!” Dean's voice floated up the stairs.

She laughed softly, smiling at Jo, eyes still half lidded, looking weary and tired but so very happy. “Your friends are interesting people.”

“Yeah... they are.” She agreed, and leaned over to plug the stopper into the tub, and turned the water on. “Let's get you in the tub, huh? You need a bath after the last day or so.”

“Believe me, I completely agree.” Mia moaned, softly. “I just want to soak.”

“Well, we'll take care of you,” Jo smiled, and straightened up, moving over to Mia, crouching at her feet. She worked carefully at the laces of the other woman's shoes, tugging them, then her bloody socks, off. “He really worked a number on you, didn't he?”

“He tortured me,” she agreed, reaching up with dirty, bloody fingers to brush Jo's hair back. “He really fucked you up, too.”

Jo winced slightly. “Just my cheek... it'll be okay, just needs a little iodine to clean it.”

“Don't downplay it,” Mia murmured, gently brushing her fingertips lightly down the other's jaw, just barely touching the wounds, checking on how bad they were. “You were really injured, Jo, and it was because you came to save me. It's my fault you got hurt.”

“It is _not_.” Jo said, fiercely. 

“Hey, I’m not stupid.” She smiled at her, gently. “I know why it happened. And I’m very grateful that you came to save me. I would be dead if you weren't there.”

“It was my fault you were in danger in the first place. I shouldn't have left. I just thought you'd be safer if I weren't here.”

“Well, you were wrong.” Mia laughed, and leaned forward to press her forehead against Jo's. “I'm safer with you around, apparently. Now... can you please help me into the tub?”

Jo laughed, and nodded.

Shifting forward on the toilet lid, Mia winced as she slid her panties down, and pushed them down her legs, kicking them off before hesitating. “Should I actually try to stand, you think, or...?”

“No,” she laughed, and took the other woman's hands, pulling her up and over so that she sat on the edge of the tub instead of on the toilet, and helped her into the tub, carefully as she could manage it. She wasn't nearly as strong as Sam, so she almost dropped her once, but instead, she stopped that by throwing out her arm, bracing herself on the bottom of the tub. Laughing, she leaned over Mia, grinning at her. “I am not very good at this, apparently.”

“Actually, you're really good at this,” Mia murmured, and abruptly shifted up just a little, pressing her split, bloody tasting lips against Jo's, a gentle press of mouth on mouth.

Jo groaned softly, eyelids slipping shut, then reluctantly pulled back. Swallowing, she murmured, “If you really want this, maybe we should do it later, when you're less... traumatized and shell-shocked.”

“I'm not kissing you because you saved me.” Mia said, looking up at her, seriously. “I'm kissing you because I have wanted to kiss you since the first time we met.”

“When I saved you,” she pointed out, smirking.

“I don't have a hero kink, relax.” The other woman laughed softly, and leaned back, sliding under the still-slowly rising water, eyes falling shut. “I kissed you because you're smart, and noble, and you're absolutely beautiful. Like spun sunshine. Woven gold. Now, warrior princess... any chance you want to help a sore girl scrub her back?”

Jo laughed, softly, and nodded. “Sure.”

“I'll scrub yours,” Mia offered, flushed, smiling gently.

“Another time.” She promised, and reached for a wash cloth.

  
  


\---

  
  


“Friend, huh?”

Sam looked up from his laptop, blinking. “What?”

“Mia is her _friend_ , huh?” Dean smirked, snapping their father's journal shut, and leaned back in his chair. His feet were up on the kitchen table, and his second Corona of the night was sitting beside him. He looked entirely relaxed in the Toretto home, like he somehow belonged here, but that sort of made sense, Sam realized. This home clearly belonged to a family, to people for whom family came first – the photos spread across the walls were testament enough to that, as were the little trophies from derby cart races and science fair ribbons that were displayed in the living room. There was a garage full of tools outside, and though there was no car in it, Dean and Sam had checked there, when they were doing a sweep of the house earlier, and there had been photos of a classic Dodge Charger there. Sam was pretty sure that Dean would love to be adopted by the Torettos, given the chance.

“Uh... yeah, that's what she said.” He hesitated. “What, you think they're not friends?”

“I think they're a hell of a lot _more_ than just 'friends'.” Dean grinned at him, snagging his beer and taking a long, slow swallow.

“...no way.” Sam blinked at him.

“Oh yeah.” He grinned, nodding. “They're a lot more than just friends.”

“Dean, no way.” Sam laughed, shaking his head. “I mean, for one, Jo's not a lesbian. She's had a crush on you since she _met_ you...”

“Who said lesbian?” He arched a brow, smirking. “I'm saying bisexual. And if she has a crush on me, I am _more_ than willing to join that little menage a ladies.”

“Very funny.” He shook his head again, snorting. “Fuck Dean, the girl just lived through being tortured by a sadistic rapist ghost, let her recover from that, thanks, before you start claiming that she's sleeping with your friend?”

“Oh come on, Jo will help her through it.” He smirked, and burst out in song – badly. “ _When I get that feeling, I need – sexual healing_ , _sexual healing yeah_...”

“Oh come on, Dean...” Sam groaned.

He snickered, pleased.

“You're a freak,” Sam informed his brother, and said, finally, “I think that we were lucky, long run, today. I mean, we could have been screwed by that whole thing... what if the van hadn't been the problem?”

“Then we would have been screwed.” Dean shook his head. “Fortunately we weren't screwed, and it was the van. We're safe.”

“That was cutting it close, though.” He murmured.

“That's what we do, Sammy, how is this any different from any other day, huh?” Dean frowned, polishing off his beer. “What's bringing all this grumbling on?”

“Jo.” Sam said, at last.

“Jo?” He blinked.

“He nearly killed her, Dean. He very nearly killed her.” He murmured, looking down at the keyboard of his laptop, frowning. “I mean, after what happened last time...”

“Yeah, Jo seems to be a trouble magnet,” Dean agreed. “But we didn't use her as bait, this time.”

“What is it with her and serial killing ghosts, anyway?” Sam sighed, shaking his head.

“Lucky, I guess.” He smiled, faintly. “Or maybe it was Mia, this time. I mean, after all, Mia is the one that got kidnapped this time. Her name sounds damn well familiar. I mean, does it sound familiar to you?”

Sam blinked. “Mia Toretto?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded, frowning. “Sounds really familiar.”

“Other than having seen her name in the papers yesterday, no, it doesn't sound familiar,” Sam frowned.

He nodded at his brother's computer. “Look her up, will you?” Dean leaned back in his chair, looking around the little house, with a frown. It was a frown of confused recognition, as though he was perfectly sure that he knew this place, though he couldn't quite put his fingers on why.

“Sure,” he rolled his eyes, and typed her name into Google, frowning slightly. “Mm. There's a high school year book entry... she owns that diner she was kidnapped from... but we knew that.”

“Yeah, that's not it.” Dean frowned. “Just... check her last name.”

Sam sighed, and shook his head, then whistled a moment later. “Her brother is on the run for grand theft and reckless endangerment and a handful of driving charges... including street racing... looks like he has a record... shit, attempted murder.” He shook his head, and twisted the computer around to face Dean, so that he could see the arrest record. 

“I know him!” Dean gaped at the computer.

“You _know_ him?” Sam repeated.

“Yeah, a few years back, there was a hunt down here, in L.A., there was a ghost car.”

“A ghost car.” His brother snorted, arching a brow.

“Yeah, you were at that egghead school of yours, and dad sent me out here to take a look at it myself, he figured I could handle it, I guess. There was a street racer that was killed, about a half dozen years ago, and though _he_ was cremated, someone had restored his car. And it was killing everyone that raced against it – and it kept racing without a driver.”

Sam whistled, lowly. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “So I went to investigate, try and torch the car, but I had to figure out which car it was, first, and you know how tight those groups are. I mean, everything they're doing is illegal, so they aren't exactly likely to tell everyone who asks whatever they want to know. So I had to infiltrate and figure out what was going on. Spent over a month in L.A., getting to know the racers and shit. And racing. That was the best way to gain respect, you know, so I’d get info, so I could figure out which car I was going against. And Dom Toretto... god, he was like their hero, their god. He was fucking hard to beat.”

“But you did it?” Sam asked, grinning slightly.

“Fuck no,” Dean snorted. “But I got close. Raced him a handful of times, always made sure to race for money though... a lot of those guys race for pink slips. There was no damn way I was gonna give away my baby.”

He shook his head, laughing softly. 

“He was a nice guy.” Dean said, after a moment, leaning back in his chair. “Bit of an asshole, really, rough around the edges and all, but... he was the kind of man you wanted to respect. Not just cause he was good at his job. It was because he was... he was a god of cars for a reason, Sammy, the things he could make a car do... _damn_.”

“Sounds like Jo isn't the only one with a thing for a Toretto.” Sam arched a brow, smirking.

“Very funny.” He drawled. 

“What? You talk about this guy like you would've been happy to drop to your knees for him!”

“Oh, _nice_.” He shook his head. “Very classy, Sammy.”

“Just pointing it out.” He grinned. 

Dean groaned softly, and stood, cracking his shoulders, and headed for the fridge, leaning inside for a moment as he considered the food, then shook his head, and closed it again. “I'm gonna go on a food run.”

“She has a ton of food in that fridge, Dean...” Sam looked confused.

“Yeah, but it's all healthy. I’m gonna get some hamburgers. You want anything?” Dean grinned at him, tugging on his jacket.

“You're impossible,” He informed him.

“I know.” He snickered.

  
  


\---

  
  


Mia was a little steadier on her feet after her bath, and insisted that she didn't really need medical attention. Jo reluctantly agreed, finally, and even let Mia clean her jaw when the other insisted that the wounds had to be tended to. 

All the same, Jo still wrapped a large towel around the other girl, and carefully helped her back to her bedroom. 

“Mmm... I’m exhausted,” Mia said, softly.

“I can't blame you,” Jo admitted, and helped the other woman sit on the edge of her bed. “Where do you keep your pajamas?”

“Don't really have any,” she admitted, shifting the towel so that she could scrub her hair with it, trying to dry the long dark curls. “I usually just wear a nice big shirt... there are few of those hanging in the closet. Grab one for yourself too, yeah?”

Jo hesitated at the closet doors, looking back at the other woman. “You want me to stay?”

“I would be really offended if you didn't, actually.”

She smiled slightly, and nodded. A few minutes later, she returned with two giant flannel shirts, offering one to Mia, who tugged it on, carefully, wincing just a little. “These are huge... do you actually go out and buy shirts that are huge because they're comfortable?”

“No, I steal them from my brother.” She laughed softly. “He's not around so much right now, so I pretty much stole every one he had.”

Jo snickered, and carefully tugged off her own long sleeved t-shirt, now in only her jeans and her bra.

“Mm.” Mia hesitated, buttons half done up, and settled back, watching her.

She flushed, and asked, “Are you just watching me, now?”

“You've gotten to see me naked,” Mia said, cheerfully, shifting back to lay against the pillows, finally doing up her buttons, crossing her ankles as she watched her, smiling softly. “You even got to see me wet and naked, which is more than pretty much most others get to see, so... I think it's only fair if I get to see you getting dressed, too.”

“Well, thanks.” She laughed, and toed off her boots.

The other smiled, watching her as she did, relaxing into the pillows, eyes half lidded. “You're a lovely girl, Jo.”

“Thanks,” she said again, and squirmed out of her jeans. “I feel like I should have music to be stripping to.”

“I could get you some music, if you'd like, but I like it better like this,” Mia smiled softly, fiddling with one of the buttons on the front of her shirt. “It's sort of more organic, more natural, you know? You really _are_ lovely, though. And it's not because you've saved me before. It's because you're beautiful.”

“You sure know how to talk to a girl.” She laughed, softly, and tossed her bra after her jeans, then hesitated before squirming out of her panties, as well, and slipping into the plaid shirt, the soft feel of flannel on skin, like the light brush of fingers against her shoulders, and her arms. It was funny, because even though she'd had sex before and this moment was completely free of sex, it was still more intimate than she had ever been with anyone else before. It was almost too much, but in the end, Jo decided that there was no way that anything else would ever been this... whole. It was almost encompassing. “Want me to turn the light off?”

“Mmmhmm.” Mia nodded, squirming over to carefully turn the bedside lamp on. “We don't need it.”

“Okay,” Jo nodded, and flicked it off, before checking the door. There was no lock on the door, but she still made sure it was firmly closed before she padded back over to the bed, and crawled up onto it, carefully. 

“Is now later enough for you?” Mia murmured.

“...yeah.” She hesitated, then nodded, smiling softly. “I think it is.”

“Good,” she smiled back at her.

Jo hummed softly, and leaned a little closer to Mia, pressing her lips gently to the other girl's, lovingly. 

“Thank you,” she breathed against her lips.

“Mmm. I’m kissing you because I want to, not because I want you to thank me,” Jo murmured, and lay down beside her, carefully, before pressing her lips to Mia's again. “But today, you're sore, and frankly, I’m sore, and I think that before this goes anywhere beyond _this_ , we maybe ought to get some sleep.”

“You've got a point,” she agreed, softly, and hesitated. “...think you can pull the blankets up?”

Jo laughed, and nodded, shifting to pull a homemade quilt over them. 

“Think your friends are going to stay the night?”

“I don't know,” she admitted, laying beside the other on the pillows, and hesitated before carefully slipping her arm around the other's waist. 

“Do they usually stay long?” Mia asked, softly, brushing her fingertips up and down Jo's forearm.

“Not usually,” she admitted. 

“Transient?” She murmured, eyes half lidded, looking like she was minutes away from finally slipping to sleep.

“Very.” Jo said, softly.

“But they seem like they're good people.” She said, finally, looking up at Jo. “If a little unusual.”

“Yeah, they are.” She laughed. “Sam's a brain man, and Dean is a car man.”

“A car man?” Mia smirked.

“Definitely a car man,” Jo laughed softly, her own eyelids starting to get very heavy. “I swear he loves his car more than people... Sam and the Impala, they're his world.”

“Mm. I think he'd like my brother,” she murmured.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah... Dom's whole world is cars.”

“Mmm... careful... you might not want to introduce them, then, or you're going to see the biggest car-fueled bromance in the world happen right in front of you,” Jo breathed, eyes slipping shut, sighing softly. “Mmm... sorry, Mia, but I’m slipping to sleep...”

“Me too,” she murmured. “Night.”

“Mmhmm,” Jo hummed in response – not terribly illuminating, but honest, at least.

  
  


\---

  
  


Dean hadn't really gone out to get food – he'd just driven out to a quiet road that overlooked the city, and parked on the side of a curve that let him stare out over the city. Leaning on the front of the hood, he looked out over the lights of the city, thumbs hooked in his pockets, lost in his own thought.

He hadn't been lying to his brother when he said that he thought that Jo was with the girl she'd fought so hard to rescue. But Sam was  _right_ , it wasn't fair for Jo. He'd talked to Ellen, what, a few weeks ago, about her daughter. She'd said that Jo called her every once in awhile, to tell her mother that she was all right, but from the impression she'd given him, Jo had quit hunting, to make sure she was safer. He was pretty sure that if he told Ellen that her daughter was still hunting, she'd have a conniption. This life wasn't a good one. An  _important_ one, he thought, because they were able to save so many people. But it wasn't a good life, Sam had been right when he said that and left the life.

Dean sighed, and squeezed the top edge of the grill of the Impala. “I dunno what I’m gonna do, baby,” he said, softly.

Yeah, he was talking to his car.

Most of the intelligent conversations he'd ever had had been with his car, even if she never talked back. 

“I mean, maybe I should suggest we fuck off again, leave her here with her girl and hope she doesn't get pulled back into this shit again. But it's in her blood, exactly like it is in ours, and you know what that means, babe. She'll go back into it, again. And now her girl knows about it, too... damn. Mia Toretto. You remember Dom Toretto, hun? Him and that _car_ of his?”

He shivered a little, despite himself, and patted the hood again. “He had that sexy Dodge Charger, remember? Heh, the way you revved up when I was at that garage of his, when we say that car, I half thought you were as completely turned on by the hotness of the Charger as I was.” He laughed, stroking his thumb along a line of chrome the way that in another situation he might have been stroking a lover. “She was a powerful beast of a machine, wasn't she? Fuck, she was  _hot_ car.”

He swore, for a moment, that the engine rumbled slightly, even though the engine was off.

Strangely enough, he wasn't even surprised. Dean had been in this car his whole life, practically lived in it, could predict her slightest move and shift like he could predict his own, and over the years, he had become more than used to slight shifts and movements. Maybe that was weird – hell, he was pretty sure that cars usually weren't supposed to move on their own. 

But the Impala did, and he didn't care. She was his car. She was naturally special.

“Heh, knew you had a thing for her,” he smirked, patting the hood. “Did you hear what happened, though? He rolled her. Smashed her up. Newspapers said it was pretty bad, too, that she was all bashed in.”

The whole chassis under him seemed to shudder slightly.

“Yeah, I know. Damn fucking shame. But she's not in the garage, and I know that Dom never would have let her be scrapped, so I think she must be in a garage somewhere. Maybe there is someone out there who could fix her up, right and proper. I mean, a car like that, you don't want to see a car like that go to the scrappers. They wouldn't know what to do with her. You and me, though, we'd know what to do with her, wouldn't we? I’d fix her up right, same as I did you, huh? I mean, I don't care how rolled and fucked up she might have gotten... if I got you back in shape, you could get her back in shape, too. It could be done. It needs to be done.”

He sat in silence for a long few minutes, just staring out over the valley and the lights of the city, stroking the chrome, softly. “Oh Impala... what do I do about this whole Jo thing, though?”

The car, naturally, didn't respond. 

“I mean, do I tell her mother so that she can come get her, do I try and tell her that she shouldn't hunt anymore? No, wait... that would be a really bad idea. The moment you tell Jo Harvelle to do anything, she's going to do the exact opposite. Huh. Maybe I should tell her to go hunting. No wait, she'd probably listen to me and throw it back in my face, later.” He laughed, softly. 

“I mean, don't get me wrong, she's like a sister, but... well. Actually, that says a lot. Hunter families are kinda fucked up, ain't we?”

The engine shifted again, under him. 

“Okay, yeah... I know we're a great family, but we _are_ a fucked up family, you know that. I mean... seriously. Our family is dad – _was_ dad, brothers, and car. That's not normal, is it? Impala Winchester.”

Impala's engine roared again, and he lay back against the hood, closing his eyes. “Yeah. Love you too, babe.”

  
  


\---

  
  


Jo had been afraid that she'd wake up in the morning, and it would have all been a fucked up dream. Well, she wouldn't have been offended or upset if the serial killing ghost part of the night before had been a dream, but at the same time, she'd been afraid that Mia kissing her would have been all an imagined fever dream, a way her subconscious had created to make her feel better about what had happened.

Waking with another woman's arm wrapped around her waist, and her cheek pillowed on a soft breast quickly assured her that she hadn't been dreaming. 

Shifting slightly in the bed, Jo yawned softly, and tried to figure out if she could move away from Mia before she managed to wake her, afraid that Mia wouldn't want to wake up with Jo squishing her chest. 

“Don't move?” Mia murmured.

She froze, surprised, and breathed, “...are you sure?”

“I like this,” the other said, softly, and that was when she realized that the soft pressure on the back of her head wasn't just a pillow like she'd originally thought, but it was actually the other woman's hand, her fingers curled in Jo's hair. “That, and I’m sort of afraid that if you move, I’ll wake up, and this will all have been a dream.”

Jo laughed softly, and murmured, “Wouldn't you rather the ghost not have been real?”

“No.” She said, without hesitation.

“...why the hell not?” Jo asked, surprised, lifting her head a little. She knew that Mia didn't want her to move, but if she didn't move, she wouldn't be able to see the other's face – and she definitely wanted to see her. Otherwise, she wouldn't really believe that she was hearing what she thought she was hearing. 

Mia smiled softly, eyes crinkling when she did, and admitted, “As fucked up as that was, I wouldn't have wanted it to not happen. Because if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met you.”

“...that might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jo said, finally, and then she did move. Mia wanted her to stay in place, and yes, she liked being curled against the other's side with her cheek on a soft breast, but at the same time, there was something she wanted far more than a comfortable cuddle, and that was a kiss – so she leaned up to press her lips very gently to Mia's. 

“Mmm.” The other sighed, fingers tightening slightly in her hair, then Mia was pressing closer, kissing her with more intensity than the light brush of lips they'd had just a moment before.

Jo wasn't entirely sure what she was doing. After all, while she'd certainly done this before, she'd never actually done this with a  _woman_ before, and part of her wondered if it was supposed to be different. It felt different, actually – softer and warmer and instead of a fevered desperation of 'just fuck me already, dammit'. She felt like singing, like her blood was on fire, a warm pit of pleasure and heat sitting low in her belly as she shifted up a little closer to Mia, kissing her deeper, their bare legs tangled together beneath the blankets. 

Mia, fortunately, seemed slightly more confident about what she was doing than Jo did, and she nipped at Jo's lower lip, silently imploring her to open to her affectionate assault.

Groaning softly, Jo parted her lips, surging deeper into the kiss, tongues meeting like a glorious moment of fury and joy.

“Mia,” she groaned softly, against her lips.

“Jo,” she countered, breathlessly, rubbing light circles into the back of Jo's scalp with her fingertips, making her very hair feel like it was tingling, as though Mia's touch was electric. Her hand was sliding down Jo's spine, now, over the curve of her ass, then back up the same path it had taken before, only under her shirt, this time. The trail her fingers were taking now across her skin was just as electric now as it was in her hair, and Jo shivered and trembled under her touch. “You're just sensitive everywhere, aren't you?”

Laughing softly, Jo lifted her head to meet the other's eyes properly, and shrugged with one shoulder. “Maybe. I guess you're just going to have to explore everywhere to see, aren' t you?”

“Challenge accepted.” Mia breathed.

Jo laughed again, and kissed the other woman, chasing the faint taste of blood in the other's mouth from her split lip, and shifted a little so that she could curl her fingers on the junction of the other's hip and thigh, fingertips stroking the soft skin of that line. “Are you just as sensitive?”

“Mmm. You'll have to see,” she countered, nipping lightly at Jo's lip. 

“But how will I see?” She asked, giggling slightly. “After all, you're the one who's making me all – _oh_!”

Mia grinned, mischievously. She'd shifted just seconds before, bending her knee as she slid her thigh between Jo's. The blond shivered against the other girl's chest, eyelids fluttering slightly. Mia hummed gently, and shifted her thigh, a gentle slip-slide of skin on slick skin, loving the way the girl groaned and arched against her. “Good?”

“Oh _god_ , Mia...”

Mia peppered soft kisses against the other's lips and jaw, trailing light, butterfly kisses up to Jo's earlobe, rocking her thigh, gently, all the while, trying to make the other woman come completely undone. And it certainly seemed to be working, because Jo was letting out soft, breathless gasps as she rocked against her, biting her lip, hard. “Don't hold back, Jo, please... you don't have to hold back...”

“Trying – trying _not_ to let the guys know...” she panted, swallowing. 

“Fuck them.” Mia laughed, breathlessly. “Okay, not literally...”

Jo groaned, beaming at the other woman, then let out another breathless cry when the other shifted her leg, and her hips jerked forward as she keened, fingers curled into tight fists in the sheets. Her breath was coming in short, quick gasps, now, and her hips seemed to be moving of her own volition as she slid along the other's thigh, desperate and wanting. 

“I want to see you come undone,” Mia whispered, squeezing Jo's hip. 

She nodded, but Jo was rather beyond words right now. She was trying to speak, to communicate, she really was, but her attention had been narrowed and focused so tightly on the sensations that Mia was causing, that pleasure was skittering up and down her spine, and her thighs were starting to tremble as pressure was building in her belly. She was so very, very close to paradise that she wasn't sure she was ever going to be able to come back down from this.

And then Mia kissed her again, a furious searing moment of heat, and Jo arched as the sensations sharpened to a bright white light behind her eyes and she crashed over the proverbial edge of the proverbial waterfall.

She slowly came back to herself a long few moments later, feeling like her skin was still shivering and electric, panting as her vision slowly came back. Everything had been beautiful blank and white for a long moment, but now the world was coming back to itself, shadows and colours and a pair of dark eyes that seemed to shine back at her. She smiled softly at the other, and reached up with slightly trembling fingers to gently brush their tips down the other's jaw. “Oh  _wow_ , that was... wow.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Mia smiled.

“Do you...?” Jo shifted slightly, swallowing.

“No, I’m fine, right at the moment.” She murmured, kissing Jo gently. “I'm still pretty damn sore. Honestly, just watching you was more than enough for me, I’m not sure I could take it right now, to be honest. So we'll wait.”

“Seems a bit selfish of me, though, to get an orgasm _that_ good and then not give one in return.” Jo pointed out.

“I know.” She kissed her again. “So you owe me one.”

Laughing, Jo grinned down at the other girl, and rolled lightly out of the bed, finally, stretching widely, cracking her back. Padding across the floor, she bent to pick up her things, then frowned as she held up her shirt, nose crinkling. “This is  _way_ too bloody to put back on, isn't it?”

“You can wear some of my clothes.” Mia suggested, slowly sitting up.

“Are you sure?” She glanced at her. 

“Very sure. You don't have to go to work _now_ , do you?”

“Technically, I think I quit that job.” Jo scratched at the back of her neck, awkwardly. “Since I threw my vest at them and said I was quitting... I had to come find you.”

“You quit to _save_ me?” Mia asked, surprised. 

“Yeah.” She admitted.

“...well, now I feel like a needy little brat, for you having to lose your job to save me.” Mia groaned, running her hand through her hair, working out some of the knots. “I swear, I don't usually need rescuing.”

“I trust you.” She smiled, leaning over, resting her palm on the bed as she kissed the other woman, gently.

“Maybe you could find a job where the boss wouldn't mind if you had to run out and save people on a regular basis.” She hesitated. “...how do you feel about restaurants?”

Jo shrugged. “Worked in them before? I’m not bad at them, but the hours usually aren't very conducive to, you know, hunting things. If I could find my way into a garage or something, that would probably be perfect, but what are the chances that I’d be able to find a garage that would take me? I have no experience – at least on paper – and a lot of guys have a real issue with girls working on their cars.”

“Mechanic, hm?” Mia looked intrigued. 

“What, is that really such a weird thing? There are girl mechanics out there, I assure you,” she laughed, softly, and pulled off the plaid shirt. “At least, I hear that there are. I don't really see many of them, very often.”

She laughed, and reached over to slide her fingertips up Jo's bare thigh. “See, the reason I ask is that my family owns a garage. It's really my brother's, but he's not around much anymore, so his friend Vince is running it right now. He's on suspended sentence, so he has to stay in the area, at least for a little piece... and it's been hard for him to find good mechanics, lately. So maybe I’ve got a job for you.”

Jo hesitated, watching her. “You're sure?”

“Hey, at least I would know why you'd have to run out in the middle of a repair, and I’d know where you were, and... frankly... I’d feel a little safer if you were right close to me.”

“Why, so I can rescue you again?” She giggled.

“Oh, very funny,” Mia drawled, and slid carefully out of the bed, slightly unsteady, but actually standing, which was a good sign, considering that she'd been weak as a kitten the night before. “Perhaps I want you to be nearby so I can get a chance to save you. Ever thought of that?”

“Mm. I approve of that idea. But if there are ghosts or demons or monsters, you are going to stay home, young lady. I don't want a ghost to take a shine to you again, got it?”

Mia laughed, kissing her lightly. “Ordering me around, are you?”

“Isn't that my right?”

“Your _right?”_ She laughed, eagerly, looping her arms slowly around Jo's shoulders, brushing her fingertips lightly over the skin in the space between the other's shoulder blades. “I'm not sure that you have any rights to order me around.”

“Isn't that what girlfriends do?” She asked, sweetly.

“Oh, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?” Mia laughed, brightly. “You know I like a challenge, and I like being treated like a lady?”

“I'll open every door for you, and bicker with you over everything you decide to change on the menu,” she offered, cheekily.

“I suppose that'll do for now.”

  
  


\---

  
  


Jo wasn't surprised when Sam and Dean left the next afternoon, nor when she checked her phone and discovered that her manager had called to fire her. She could pick up her last check on Friday.

Vince was suspicious of any mechanic that Mia had chosen, especially one that was  _female_ , but he allowed her to get a chance, anyway, and it wasn't long before the man was letting her take control of her own jobs, grudgingly respectful. She was impressed by the way he seemed able to detect problems in engines by sound alone, and the longer she spent buried deep in the mechanical workings of an engine, covered in grease, the more respect he gave her. 

She moved into Mia's house with her about two months later, even though they both joked that it was really far too early for living together, but now the once-bustling house was starting to have life and sound in it again.

Vince started coming back to the house again, drinking the Coronas that Mia always kept the fridge stocked with, and the three of them would sit around the living room and laugh and tell stories into the early hours. It was then that she heard about Jesse, about the truck jobs, about what had happened to Vince, and why his arm was scarred up the way it was. They told her about Brian Spilner-O'Connor, about Dom and his car, about the racing. Mia explained that Dom's car was with a mechanic in Oxnard that was supposed to be some kind of genius with restorations, and Vince complained that if Dom had been home, they could have just fixed it themselves in a couple weeks, tops. 

Jo had actually been sort of surprised that Vince was okay with her dating Mia, all things considered. He didn't seem terribly... open minded.

It wasn't until they'd been together for a long while that Mia finally admitted that she'd threatened Vince if he wouldn't accept their relationship – told him that they were supposed to be family, and that if he decided to not accept the girl  _she'd_ chosen to expand her part of the family with, than she was going to tell her brother, and Dom would  _definitely_ make sure that she was accepted. Jo had laughed for a good solid half hour upon hearing that. 

It was supposed to be perfect. 

And for the first time since she'd left home, it actually was.

  
  


\---

  
  


Jo ran her hand through her hair, a little frustrated. Today was supposed to be a nice day off for both her and Mia – there had been a moratorium put on both schoolwork and carwork and they were supposed to drive up to Oxnard to take a look at Dom's car. It was done, the mechanic – Xander, she was pretty sure – had said, and they were supposed to make a little day party of it and go check on the final details. 

Only when they'd got there, the doors had been bashed open and the Charger – and the mechanic – were gone. 

They'd called the police to report the apparent theft and possible kidnapping, and a carpenter to come and fix the doors. They'd finally left the task to the Oxnard police, and went home, but now that they were actually here, Mia just wouldn't stop  _pacing_ , and it was sort of driving Jo insane. This was supposed to be their day to relax and celebrate, but instead, someone had stolen Dom's car, and everything was apparently falling apart around their ears.

“Mia...” Jo sighed softly, stretching out on the couch, watching her. “If the police find anything, they'll call.”

“But Xander...”

“I know,” she agreed, softly. “If anything has happened to him, he'll call you too. He knows what that car means to you and Dom.”

“Yeah, but - “

“Please, for the love of god, stop pacing, you're making me dizzy.” Jo groaned. “Now come here and let me calm you down, or I am getting up and going to the garage and fixing something, despite you having _expressly_ forbidden me from doing that today.”

Mia sighed, and padded over to the couch, slumping to sit beside Jo, and because the other was laying, her lower back pressed against Jo's belly as she slumped back into the couch cushions. “I'm sorry, Jo, you know how it is, though, that car is everything... that car is  _family_ , even...”

“I know.” She murmured, stroking Mia's lower back gently. 

“Family is everything.” 

“I know that, too.” Jo smiled up at her girlfriend, her lover, her passion. “I consider you my family, Mia, you know that. You, and Vince, and the Winchester boys, the few times they come around...”

“We saw them last week,” Mia reminded her, relaxing into the other's touch.

“Yes, well... they still only come around every once in a while.” She laughed, wishing that Mia had chosen to wear a shirt instead of a dress, so she could get her fingers underneath to rub her skin. She sort of had an addiction to Mia's skin, really. It was just so smooth and soft. “But I consider them family too.”

“Mm. Me too.” Mia smiled, softly. “I _wish_ I could introduce you to Dom...”

“I'd like to meet him, too.” Jo smiled up at her girlfriend, relaxed, finally. “I know so much about him I sort of feel like I already know him.”

“It's just that he doesn't know about you, and I wish I could tell him - “

The phone rang, and Mia scrambled to reach for it.

Jo groaned, and slumped back into the arm of the couch, closing her eyes. She listened, of course, and wasn't actually surprised when it was the mechanic, Xander, calling to tell her what had happened. “Xander, oh my god!” Her girlfriend was say ing. “ I went by your garage this morning, and the door was bashed in, and there were alarms going off, and the Charger was gone - !”

There was a moment of silence, they they kept talking, and it wasn't until Mia said, softly, “You're with  _Dom_ , aren't you?”

“Oh my god,” Jo sat up, amazed. It had been a year since Mia had heard from her older brother, Jo knew that, knew that Mia desperately wanted nothing more than to curl her arms around her brother and bury her face in his chest, then smack him for leaving, then sit him down to tell him everything that had happened while he'd been gone. She wanted to tell him about Jo, about the ghost of Leonard Lake, about getting Vince to restart the garage. Mia needed her brother there at her side, needed to tell him everything, and he wasn't here to tell. 

But he was on the phone, now, and Jo smiled, softly, relieved. 

Her lover needed her brother.

She pressed her lips to Mia's temple, and murmured, “I'll give you some space to talk to him...”

Mia caught her arm, and shook her head. 

Jo hesitated, but settled back down into the couch again, quietly, watching her as Mia curled the phone closer to her ear and spoke to a brother she hadn't talked to in close to a year. Mia's face all but glowed as she talked, her eyes bright and her whole demeanor lighter than it had been in the entire time Jo had known her. She supposed she could be resentful that she'd never managed to make the other smile  _quite_ like that, but no, it was right, as far as she was concerned, that her brother was the one that made her this happy. 

She did catch her name, though, in the midst of that conversation, and glanced up, surprised. 

Mia looked down at her, meeting her eye as she smiled, brightly, and reached down to run her fingers through Jo's hair, lightly, still talking to Dom on the phone, and Jo realized, a bit belatedly, that Mia was busy telling her older brother everything about the woman in her life.

Flushed, Jo smiled up at her, eyes half lidded as she finally relaxed. 

She was born a Harvelle, and until the day she died, she would always be Bill and Ellen's daughter. But there were two kinds of families – those you are born with, and those you choose, and her chosen family were the Torettos. 

She was family, now.

  
  


\---

  
  


EPILOGUE

  
  


The phone was ringing.

Groaning, Jo rolled over in the bed, half moving out of Mia's warm arms, and fumbled for the portable phone that was sitting on the bedside table, ignoring the way that Mia grumbled behind her. Her fingers sort of fumbled over the table for a long few moments, until finally she was able to grab the phone, and she flicked it on so that it would stop fucking  _ringing_ , and held it to her ear. “....hello?”

“Oh thank god, Jo.”

She groaned, and pressed tighter into her pillow, rather pleased by the way that Mia squirmed closer to her and pressed her chest against Jo's own back. “Dean, you had better have a fucking  _good_ reason for calling me at this time of the morning.”

“I do.”

“...and that reason is...?” She yawned.

“The Impala...”

“What about her?” She asked, yawning as she did, so that the words were slightly muffled and funny sounding. “You didn't wreck her again, did you?”

“No.” He said, quickly, then finally, he said, “She's alive.”

“Of course she is,” she mumbled, pressing back into Mia, shivering when her just-as-sleepy lover brushed her fingertips over Jo's stomach. “You put like a month of work into her, she's alive, you rebuilt her. You're calling me to tell me _that_?”

“No, Jo... she's _alive_.” Dean's voice sounded slightly strained, like he was trying to keep his voice steady. “As in... she's a giant fucking _robot_.”

Jo blinked, sitting up a little. “...are you on something?”

“No, I’m not – she's right _here_!”

“...you're kidding, right? I mean... you had that car completely apart after the crash, you rebuilt her, how is it even _possible_ that she's actually a robot.... wouldn't you have _noticed_?” Jo frowned, shifting slightly so that she was fully sitting. She smiled lightly at Mia, who pouted up at her and motioned for her to come back to lie down. Holding up a single finger, indicating for her to wait a moment, she shifted the phone to hold it between her shoulder and her jaw, and said, “Did you find a spirit that enchanted your car, or something... or....?”

“A demon just about ganked me.” Dean said, quietly. “Had me pinned to the side door, it was about to full on rip my head off, and – and she just... started moving. Turned into this giant fucking robot, then she grabbed the demon and – well. Crushed him flat.”

“And now she's a giant robot?” She said, slowly.

“Now she's a giant robot.” He agreed.

“And you're calling me... why?” Jo yawned again, running her fingers through Mia's hair. 

“Because she says that - “

“ _Says_? She _talks_?”

“Oh yeah.” Dean cleared his throat, and admitted, “Yeah, she talks. Almost as much as Sammy, so...”

“Irritatingly much?” She suggested.

“Well, she's a much better conversationalist?” He offered. “Anyway, she says that there's something about your girlfriend's brother's car. You know, the Charger?”

“What about it?” She asked, surprised. It had been a week now, since it had gone missing and turned up in Tijuana with the mechanic and Dom. Mia had explained, as they lay in bed one night, that there was something unusual about that car, that it would always come home, on its own, if someone didn't take it home. Jo had suggested that maybe there was a spirit inside of it that was causing this to happen, but Mia had just stroked her hair and admitted that if there was, she didn't want it gone. The car had never hurt any of them – it took _care_ of them. 

“She says it's the same. Says it's alive.”

“Holy shit.” She breathed.

“Where is that car?” Dean asked, firmly.

“...Tijuana.” She took a deep breath, and looked down at Mia, who was now watching her intently. “She ran away, about a week ago, to find Dom.”

“Son of a... can you make it to Reno?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “We'll make it to Reno. Be there soon.”

“What was that?” Mia asked, when Jo hung up the phone and set it heavily back on the bedside table, eyes wide. 

“Remember Dean's car?”

“Yeah...”

“It's alive.” She smiled faintly at Mia, starting to feel like she'd somehow gone to sleep in the real world and woken up in some sci fi movie. “And she says the Charger is, too.”

Mia sighed softly, and murmured, “Oh.”

“Reno.” Jo slid out of the bed, shaking out her blond curls. “Can someone take the diner for a couple days for you?”

“I'll call Rosita,” she nodded, following. “Better tell Vince.”

“What is it with us and _cars_?” Jo groaned, shaking her head. 

  
  



End file.
